Welcome to the Eclectic Gamers Podcast. Today is Sunday, December 17th. It is episode 51. I am Tony. And I'm Dennis. And we're going to be talking to you about pinball and video games and the joys of episode 51 and the end of the year that will be our next episode. Yes, because of the New Year's Eve being New Year's Eve and still being 2017 and that actually falls on our next recording date, which because we have no real lives, we'll be able to do. So we'll do our fun recap then. We're just going to sit around and get drunk and do a recap. Some of that might be true. Some of it. Maybe a minor amount. And we're actually in person today. So that's unusual for us. Yeah. but, okay, it's been two weeks. Two weeks. So, Tony, what's happened? What have you been doing over these last two weeks? I committed a cardinal sin as a member of the PC Master Race. Oh, no. I purchased a console. Oh, no. And I didn't even go out and purchase some big super Uber console, like, you know, the PS4 Pro. Not even the PS4 Pro? Or an Xbox One X. The Xbonhex? No, I am now a proud owner of a Switch. Mariam. I did. Oh, my. I broke the siren call of an open world Legend of Zelda game was too much for my open world loving soul. Well it did very well at the video game awards Yeah it did And I'm not surprised Everyone has been giving it very high marks Even those who have gotten tired of it Have said it was fun until they got tired of it When they got 500 hours in You're like well I need to play something else Fallout had to go aside at some point We couldn't play Fallout forever Well maybe with mods With mods Okay so Switch So you have Zelda for it I have Zelda and I have Pinball FX3. That is literally it so far. But on the other hand, by getting a system like this, it let me put together an actual Christmas wish list that had video gaming stuff in it because very rarely does anybody go look at my Steam wish list or give me gift cards for Steam or anything else like that. So this gives me options because I was able to throw. And the reason I decided on the Switch over a PS4, because I was seriously tempted with the PS4. Yeah, I know. You mentioned it on the show a few times. It was when I sat down and looked at the numbers, right now there were like four, maybe five games I wanted on the PS4 and nothing else that was really huge that I couldn't get elsewhere. Right. And then on the Switch, it was, you know, there's a half dozen games that are only on the Switch. Yeah. I mean, I wanted Legend of Zelda. I wanted to play Odyssey. And forgive me for even saying it, but after trying Eric's Mario Rabbids little XCOM game, I want it. I want to play it. It was fun. I enjoyed it. I enjoyed the half hour, 45 minutes I spent on it. So I want it. Then to top it all off They are putting out They are putting out Switch versions Of Bayonetta, Bayonetta 2 And Bayonetta 3 has been announced All on the Switch I loved Bayonetta I never got to play Bayonetta 2 because it was on Wii U And I never went with Wii U No one did So, nope, I broke I broke and bought a console The portability factor Because up until literally this morning I've only ever played it portable I finally got a TV shifted into my computer desk and I was able to actually play it on a TV for the first time and I've had it for over a week now well I've listened to some other gaming podcasts and some of them like to dock it all the time and some of them constantly play it portably and they just put out a Nintendo ran an actual survey thing and they put it out, and it runs about 51% of people use it either, both, about the same. Okay. And their little survey thing they did only had 18% of respondents. If I remember correctly, don't quote me, I think it was 18%, that said they only use it docked. So we'll see. I've used it both. Legend of Zelda is a little tougher, probably because I'm getting older. on that screen. I've got to really hold it up there to be able to see everything when you're trying to look into distance and shoot arrows at stuff on the screen. But, Pinball FX Pinball FX 3 is great, portable, not a problem. I saw that they allowed it to be put into a vertical state for that. I haven't even tried it in vertical state yet. I've just used it standard horizontally and it's been alright. I haven't tried the vertical yet, so I should do that. And they have this special going on, their anniversary special. So up until, I don't remember what, I think it's the 20-something of this month, Pinball FX 3, you can get a free two tables for free. So I've got, instead of just having the starter table, I've got two other tables. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I forgot what they named that pack. It's like the Legends Pack or something like that. And the Adventureland The Adventureland table is a lot of fun Zeus is something or other It's a lot of fun I've been enjoying it I've been playing it a lot The last few days Okay Well I went and saw Last Jedi I know you've seen it I've seen it I'm not going to say much on it Because I don't want to spoil it It would be I liked it but it's definitely not my favorite. I never expected any of these to be my favorite. Well, I always hope to be surprised. I always hope to be surprised, but Empire just hits every note just right. This is not my second to Empire. Well, no. I'm not saying it's your second to anything. I'm just saying it would be impressive, bordering on impossible, I think, for any movie to hit the notes that Empire hits with me. Yeah, that's fair. That's fair. But anyway, I did like it. Yeah, I enjoyed it. Well, I said it was my daughter went out yesterday while we were at pinball. My daughter, my oldest daughter, who had gone with me and my wife to see it, went out. They had some shopping to do. They did some shopping. She took her allowance money, and she bought herself a bunch of new figures all from that movie because she loves them. So she has a bunch of Because she needed another Rey figure And another Leia figure And a Rose figure Yeah, actually, I like the Rose character I do too Probably my favorite new character That they introduced She was pretty well fleshed out So anyway, if you're a Star Wars fan, go ahead and see it It ain't a Phantom Menace, so don't worry about that Yeah, it isn't that And if you like Hux, you'll like Hux more Because Hux is awesome And as you just noted, we did Pizza West Tournament. It was the last monthly tournament of the year. In fact, there's a tournament going on right now, I believe. Yeah, it started. Yeah, it started just not quite an hour ago. So to my knowledge, that's the last Kansas side tournament of the year. Yeah, it is. Unless somebody has a New Year's Eve thing set up that I haven't heard about yet, it is. A last chance. Yeah, someone might. I know they popped one up last year, and it was short notice pop-up. That's true. It feels like we've had a lot more tournaments this year, though, on the Kansas side. Maybe not a lot more. There's so many launch parties, though, it just sort of feels like it. Right, there's been a lot of launch parties. I mean, there was, and that's what's going, the tournament going on today is the Guardians of the Galaxy launch. And they've done an Aerosmith launch. There was a Star Wars launch. there. See, part of the thing is I know we also have more locations open up like Tapcade, but that's North Kansas City. I'm trying to count it because that's fake Missouri points and I only keep track of real Kansas points because that's what the Kansas City market feeds off of. They all play on the Kansas side. My end placement will almost assuredly be lower than I was in 2016. They're just a lot better players now. More players as well. There are. My placement is going to be about the same place, which is way down there. You were your top 30? 31 or 32 last time I checked. Okay. Yeah. Not that last night's showing did me real good. I mean, being the first person eliminated in the tournament. Well, you probably, but I'm sure others tied with you at that. I'm sure others tied with me, but seeing as the first game was Flash Gordon, and that went really really really quickly it can be brutal I think I saw someone put up almost a billion just playing it I would say a billion what god was hovering above the table so anyway so we wrapped up with that and that's really all I had to say So I think we can go ahead and move on into pinball and our, as usual, our first segment. Pinball! Yeah. Obviously that was some pinball, but people don't really care about what we do in our tournament scene. I wanted to start with a few, a couple news pieces that are both related to Stern pinball. First is they have issued some kits, not like mod kits. These are kits for stopping problems that have been happening with their newer games. These are all Spike games. Both kits relate to Ghostbusters, Batman 66, Star Wars, and Aerosmith. And one is their Core Node Stabilization Kit, and that's designed to address vibration issues. Some people have been reporting node board failures, and the Spike system uses node boards. and basically, I don't want to dive into a whole lot of it, but basically the idea is when a board goes bad, you now just replace the whole board. You don't get out your soldering iron and start... Plug and plug. Right, plug and plug replacement. Right, right. But a lot of owners have complained because the node boards are running several hundred dollars if you were to buy one. It depends on which board is bad, but they tend to run somewhere on the order of $200 to $500. and even though it's all the Spike system, all of the games pretty much are using unique node boards, so you can't just have, oh, here's the node board for lights. Oh, I can use it for Batman, Ogre, Spice. No, no, no, no, no. Oh, they didn't do that. Oh, that's kind of... Well, I mean, the system is relatively new, so some people are, well, maybe they'll get to some standardization at some point. Now, some of the stuff like the light ones make a bit more sense because they actually have the LEDs on the board, so the light placements have to be different unless you used cookie cutter insert dropping and stuff. But anyway, so yeah, obviously it's a big complaint because it's an expensive plug-and-play solution that obviously could have a lot of appeal to home collectors who may not, I mean, again, as the market has moved away from operators, the idea of not having to send your board out for service is nice, but on the flip side, no one knows how to fix the number. Anyway, the way that they've been installed has been causing damage from the vibration of the machine. It's shaking and the leads are breaking. So they have released a stabilization kit, which consists of either, I guess, wire ties and or spacers. Apparently that fixes it. That would be my guess. My guess would be spacers or maybe like rubber spacers, rubber grommet type things to dampen vibration. Yeah. So it's a pretty simple kit, but they're already putting all that stuff on the games they're currently making. But there is, I guess, a free kit available for anyone who has these games that needs it to go ahead and protect the node boards. So if you've already purchased a new in-box Stern or a gently used Stern, this might not be a bad idea for you to take advantage of. Yeah, and I don't know what the process is. Go to the Stern Pinball's website if you want to see. I mean, if you were the first buyer, contact your distributor. and they'll, I'm sure, hook you up. If you're a secondary buyer, I don't know if you have to buy the kit or not. Other kit is a capacitor kit, and apparently these same games have an occasion to register false switch hits. So they've released a kit that works. Obviously, it's an issue with the capacitor. So I don't remember what the resolution is, but it fixes it. So anyway. I've seen a couple of those machines register hits that didn't make sense because the ball wasn't anywhere near some of the hits that registered. Yeah. I don't recall experiencing it myself, but I might have just been oblivious. I'm not the highly attuned player that you are, focused in like a laser. Yeah, no, it was more along the lines I was watching over somebody's shoulder, and they were like, well, why did that hit when the ball wasn't there? Ah. I don't know. Force. Force powers. Yeah, it was force powers. So anyway, so there are some kits available for the modern sterns, And other big piece of news is that Stern has finally released version 1.0 of the Star Wars code. Yay! So it's done. I mean, they'll probably be in more patches. There's always more patches. There is. But it's been interesting because obviously there's been a lot of complaining about Stern and code quality has always been an issue in recent times. Well, I'm going all the way back to Wheel of Fortune, which never was seen as having finished code. and the ultimate shift up with, like, Walking Dead, which started with arguably bad code, and then it became great, and then they just put out more. We mentioned that on the last episode. They put out sort of a surprise update with even more code. Right. And, you know, even though I was at Pizza West for the tournament for hours yesterday, I didn't get one game in on Star Wars. You know, I didn't either, and it wasn't because it was not capable. It was because I felt like I was busy. I was sitting. I was knocked out of the tournament. We'd carpooled together and Dennis did very well yesterday. So I was waiting, but that game was in continuous play. There were three or four people who were just rotating through that game pretty quickly. And they had the new code on, so I'm guessing they were trying to learn the new code. And I have to admit, even though Steve Ritchie is my favorite designer, I haven't been drawn to keep playing Star Wars. I haven't either. And I really should because I need to learn it because every location we have in the area has a Star Wars. Well, yeah, it just makes sense. I mean, from an operator point of view, Star Wars is a table to have. No, and it's not the layout that has bugged me. Well, I've had some frustrations with some things when I'm playing it. But mostly it's the sort of like, what am I supposed to do? I'm not clear. It feels like sometimes I have a longish game, but I don't get any points for it. And again, these are all things that are like, that tells you, Dennis, that you should be playing it more. Learning the rules. But it's not like with Ghostbusters, it always felt intuitive to me. Like, you know, there's a ladder system. There's some complexity to, you know, understanding how to do your multiball, like how he activated by hitting the captive balls and stuff. But it all just kind of fit together, and it seemed to tell me pretty well on the play field, here's what you need to do to be successful. And Star Wars has been, you know, it's just like with Game of Thrones. What house am I supposed to choose? Well, I just follow whatever the guy on Tilt Forum says. Okay so I playing Martell all the time It was Greyjoy at first and then it became Martell and everyone learned their lesson So anyway Everyone realized well I not actually good enough to complete everything to make Greyjoy worthwhile Yeah So the only thing I really know, but I wanted to announce that version 1.0 is out for a couple reasons. One is, even though I haven't had a chance to try it yet, my main understanding that the big shift that they've done in the finalized version is a lot of the multivol stacking options that existed, they're gone now. at least as it relates to what are seen as the fourth missions in. And I guess that's a feature you can toggle in the settings. So by default, you can't stack that anymore to make it, I guess, a little less of a point, like just a point smorgasbord, I'm assuming. The other thing is that so far from most of the comments I've either heard now or read about have been very positive about how this code is, enough that I know someone came to me yesterday when we were at the tournament and said that they moved from hating Star Wars to actually liking it now. Wow, that's quite the change. And it could happen with me because, like you, I've just not gone into it a lot. I haven't, I don't want to say I haven't cared, but it was just, it was okay. It didn't seem like a great player that I really jumped into and enjoyed. and everywhere we've got it, there's other things that I would rather play, so I normally just play other things unless I catch it in tournaments. Right. Which is sad. As a Star Wars fanboy, I mean, I'm kind of saddened by that. Yeah, I mean, I don't know if it's a mix. It has very short ball times for me generally, so I feel like when it comes to the casual play, am I getting my money's worth? I last longer on Ghostbusters. Maybe that's not true for a lot of people, but it is for me. I don't mind playing Ghostbusters in tournament. I don't mind Ghostbusters. Some people hate Ghostbusters in tournament. I rarely blow up Ghostbusters. I rarely blow up any game. I'm not that good of a player. But Ghostbusters, I'm solid enough on Ghostbusters that with a couple shots going my way, it's not unusual for me to win rounds on Ghostbusters. So, yeah, I have no problems playing Ghostbusters. Well, and it has a nice level of brutality that even skilled players can struggle with. Right. I always, I mean, that was, I, for Pizza West, we, most of the time I, we did draw it. We drew the games out of a bag. But I did, for a couple rounds, we did allow the loser to either pick game or pick position. And so on one of those instances where we did that, what would I do? I would say things like Flash Gordon and Funhaus. If the person I was playing is better than me, I have to send you to games that are brutal because I have to try and equalize where I can. And I understand how to score points on both those games. I'm sure my opponent knows as well. It's just I'm hoping that the outlands will just suck the brains right out of that pinball. And it worked out for quite a while for me. But inevitably, one gets caught up and my scrubbiness loses out to better players. So anyway, that's it I had for news. It's, of course, end of year, so there's not a whole lot. I did want to announce the Twippy Awards. Twippy! Yes. This week in pinball. We discussed them a bit regarding their interview with Deep Root on our last episode. Well, they are doing their first annual pinball awards. So I have a link in the show notes So people can go and vote I believe they're doing the votes all the way through the end of the year And then sometime in early January They're going to do like a live show on Twitch or YouTube or something I'm assuming And give out the awards And they got little trophies and stuff But I thought it might be fun Even though it's been so long since I voted I don't even remember what my choices were anymore I remember what Most of my choices were But it's because most of my choices are the same choices Oh okay I was actually torn more than I thought I would be on some of these, but I want to go ahead and run through the categories, the best categories. I say the best categories because there were choices for all of these. Let's go ahead and just hit on those. The games that are up for the award in all these best of designations are Aerosmith, Alien, Batman 66, Dialed In, Guardians of the Galaxy, Lexi Lightspeed Escape from Earth, Star Wars, The Jetsons, and Total Nuclear Annihilation. They basically, I think, did anything that came out December 2016, which is how Batman got in. Yeah. Through, I guess, up to the date of release. Otherwise, I would... Because if you went through the end of November, well, I know, I guess you still would have gotten Guardians. Yeah, because Guardians started... We didn't have it on location in November. But I know people who started getting them just before Thanksgiving. So, no, that makes sense. So, that seems to be how they did it. They did a year. They just didn't do a calendar year. Which is understandable There are video game awards We see groups that do that They push all the December stuff into the next year Which makes sense You haven't had enough time to play them to get to know them To get a feel for them Now they had some write-ins For favorite pinball podcast Favorite pinball Twitch streamer Favorite pinball YouTube channel Favorite new mod I wasn't going to go over those with you Because people can write what they want You can write that I won't beg. I don't beg. You know, we had every listener write us in. I think we'd still lose. I know we would. There's not much point. But, hey, you know, if you actually do like us the best, I mean, I don't want to say don't write us in. Just be honest with yourself. Write in the period you like best. I know I did not write in a favorite new mod, and I didn't write in a YouTube channel. I probably should have written in Papa TV because that's the one I watch the most for the tutorials. I didn't put in a pinball channel either because I don't watch any pinball on YouTube. Did you write in a Twitch streamer? I did. Was it Deadflip? Yeah. Okay. Me too. Okay. Deadflip's about the only Twitch streamer, the only, let me rephrase. Deadflip's about the only pinball Twitch streamer that I watch with any regularity. Well, he's the most prolific as part of the, I mean. I mean, I watch... There are several that do it now, but they usually go a couple nights a week, and I don't blame them the slightest for that. Oh, not at all. I mean, this is his life now. He's a Twitch partner. That's his thing. And I think he makes pinball entertaining and approachable to people who don't know it. And I think that's the most important thing that Twitch can do for the medium. I agree. I've seen some of the other channels, and I think they're good. But they're not prolific enough to be my favorite. Okay, so best theme. And I know in the voting, the notation was, this is just, what is the best theme? Not how well it was incorporated or anything like that. Just what was the best of all these games? Which one had the best theme as a theme in and of itself? You know I think I ended up voting Guardians On this because the property Is so hot right now I just thought Star Wars is a great iconic theme But it's been done several times So I went with Guardians I was tossed between Guardians and Aliens And the big problem with me with Aliens Was literally Pulling away from the integration part And just going with the theme solid And even there I ended up going with Guardians because I really love Guardians of the Galaxy. I've never played the pinball machine. I just love the franchise. Well, I really love the theme of Alien, but much even more so than Star Wars, because Star Wars at least has these new movies now. Alien is dead. But there was an Alien movie this year. No, that doesn't count. Prometheus things don't count. We're going to have an episode sometime where I tear into just why Prometheus is a terrible movie. It was such a terrible disappointment. It is visually beautiful and every character in the film is stupid, including the aliens. They're all dumb. They're dumb! We just need to do an eclectic rips-on. Yes. It's special. Maybe if we get an alien on location, which seems to be next to impossible, given the reputation highway pins have in our area. It would be an excellent time for me just to weave that in. Yeah. But, anyway. So that's the best theme. Okay, so we're in agreement on that. All right, which game do you think had best theme integration? This one was tough. And part of the reason it was so tough was because I haven't actually played a Batman 66 yet. I've had an opportunity to twice now that I've not been able to make it to because of other obligations. but in the end I ended up going with Dialed In oh okay yeah for the whole cityscape thing going on and the newscasters that is a good point I did go with Batman I have played it and I just thought the way the clips and stuff I thought it felt like the show so to me it hit those buttons from watching people play it I thought it looked like it integrated really well but having not played it myself I wasn't willing to put a point to it. So I went with the one I had played. Because I like Dialed In. Oh, yeah. No, no. I think it's a fun game. There's a lot there to like. All right. Best sound in Call Outs. Carol Smith. Okay. I went with Total Nuclear Annihilation on this because of the sound package. It was right there. It was tight with me. And I also, because I like the Call Outs, specifically just the Call Outs in Dialed In, too. But in the end, I decided that Aerosmith had the slight edge sound-wise. Okay. No, I can see it. Okay. Next one would be best artwork. If I remember right, I went with TNA on that one. Okay. This one, I know I was, I can't remember. I was torn between picking Guardians and picking Aerosmith, and I think I chose Aerosmith in the end. See, because once they released that art package for Total Nuclear Annihilation, that whole 80s kind of cartoon 80s vibe back glass and everything. I liked it a lot. I really liked it. For me, Total Nuclear Annihilation, I liked the back glass. I don't like the play field very much, though. I don't like the cluster of the one that was always sharpied in. I don't like how it looks in the actual art. It was enough for me to be like, no, that one immediately was second tier to the Dirty Donnie style. I'm pretty sure I went with Dirty Donnie's work on Aerosmith. I'm not a huge fan of the animations on Aerosmith, but I thought the back glass translate is okay. The play field looks really good to me. But I did like how, especially given how limiting Disney can be, what Franchi did with Guardians. I thought that he did a really good job with it. There was a lot to pick from there. Okay, best rules Slash code So what's the game with the best programming? I'm trying to remember I'm pretty sure I did Dialed In I did either Dialed In Or Total Nuclear Annihilation I think for this one it was Dialed In There were a lot of my decisions Is it Dialed In or is it TNA? Dialed In or TNA? I remember because I debated between those two for most of these I think I debated between Dialed In and Aerosmith, which I thought actually came out with decent code. And I think it's fun to play. But I think the rules balance on Dialed In was enough that put me over the top. I did consider TNA as well because the rules, I think, are fairly well fleshed out. I just don't have a lot of time on it because I've only played the Whitewood. And it's easier to just say, oh, well, now you just need more hits and just keep doing that. So there's more, in my view, there's more depth to the code in these non-retro games. So it's harder to, so, you know, it's like Dialed In's coding, Kiefer's work on that was a lot more, to me, impressive. Yeah, no, makes total sense. I think Dialed In is what I ended up going with, and it was basically because it was a deeper code set. But like I said, Dialed In and TNA were big between me on the decisions throughout. I mean, just because right now, as of December, I still think TNA is the best game I played overall this year. Yeah. I mean, it was the highlight of Texas for us. Okay. Next is Best Light Show. This was easily Total Nuclear Annihilation for me. I think that's what I put, too. I was like, well, I don't know if... I mean, there are a lot of things when I thought about taking it to production, what would I have sacrificed to get the price lower? Because Spooky doesn't make as much on a total nuclear annihilation as they would on one of their normal games because of everything that's packed in. And there's that color-changing GI lighting. No one else is really doing a lot of that, at least on pro models and stuff. So it's quite a spectacle. So I think it's the most impressive. I'm pretty sure that's the one I put in. I should have written down what I was putting in. I should have as well. I didn't just immediately check it. I did think, well, Dialbin does have a pretty good light show as well. But, no. Nah. Yeah, that's not how it went. Best toys and or gimmicks. This one, I think I chose Aerosmith for the toy box. See, I think I put down Guardians because of the Groot head. I might. You know, I thought about that. It is really cool when he spits the balls out. Yes. Groot vomiting pinballs is hilarious to me. And every time I see it, it makes me laugh. Just a little bit on the inside. Maybe, you know, I don't know. I did. I oscillated on this one. And that was the one I was between. I'm surprised I didn't really consider dialed in on this. You know, it's got a lot of toys. It's got those little micro drones with the spinning props and everything. It's got a lot of stuff. The theater. The theater. The cell phone. No, it's obviously, it has a ton, but I know for a fact that it's not what I chose. No, no. For whatever reason, well, maybe because it integrates too well. I just don't think of them as, no toy on that play field draws my eye. Right. It's just part of the game. Like I said, on Guardians, it's Groot, vomiting balls. Sorry, Pat. You made it too much part of the game. Sorry. No award for you. Okay. Let's see. Best play field, layout, and gameplay. I might have chosen that one. I'm trying to think if I did or did not. I think I did, yeah. Because that was the closest in this list that was basically just best bloody game. And that's what I consider TNA, so. Yeah, yeah. Best display and animations. I think I went with Dialed In. I don't, it was either Dialed In or Aerosmith, but I don't remember. I believe I did Batman. I liked the clips I thought it just and again I wasn't trying to make it get back into oh this is how theme feels but see and with I think with Dottie because it's got all those interesting things like the selfie mode and stuff like that I liked how that displayed on the screen I can see that and it's hilarious to watch people who look like you're punching them in the gut because they're not actually looking up or doing anything while they're playing or it's flashing up all the pictures because there's some people when it flashes up all the pictures, every single, it looks like they just took one picture because the head's not moving, they're just rock solid steady and then you see other people who move around a bit more like me and some of our other players that they're like all over the place to the point where sometimes the camera's grabbing pictures of the people hiding behind them that are watching over their shoulders because they're moving so much. So yeah, no, I like that. Okay. Well, those were our those are our award picks, but, uh, go follow the link and vote. If you haven't yet, uh, Google account is required to do this vote the control vote stuffing Some of these I was actually I was talking to Jeff who does the This Week in Pinball and I suggested that he do a Google sign because it was I felt it was pretty obvious on pin side that there were some people that would be more than willing to balance stuff for some of the boutiques. And some of those boutique games may very well deserve to win in my view, but, you know, They don't need to win by... Not that it's that hard to... No. But how many Google accounts do you want to keep making for some award that isn't even going to be yours? Yeah, that's true. You know, we did a Google sign-in one time for one of our contests, but we get so little. I mean, I think the most we've ever had was just over 200 for a round of something. It's not enough for us to worry about it. Whereas when you have, like, best Stern fan of the year and they're paying bots to go in and vote. Yeah, no, that's very true. That was really bad. And I think this will be somewhere in the middle of it. I know. Personally, I've got like six or seven Google accounts, so I could do it. Oh, yeah. I have a few. I only use my email one for things like this. But technically, I suppose I could go in. Yeah. I've only got one that I really main use. The others are all for like, oh, this is the one I use when I'm selling stuff on Craigslist. Or this is the one I use for whatever. This is the one that's tied into my personal YouTube thing because I don't have it tied into my main one. Yeah, it's just, yeah, it won't, it just cuts down. It doesn't eliminate. Okay, next pinball item. Our next contest, which is not Google Sign-In Recovered, is what we discussed briefly on the last episode, the shame pinball machines. Shame. That's right. This time. Shame. Yes, I thought about, maybe I'll put a picture of her. I don't want to have a copyright notice from HBO saying, take that picture down of the Grand Sept's bell ringer. So as mentioned, we were planning to do that in the last episode. After the last episode aired, shortly after actually, I created a Google form where people can go and start giving us submissions to build out what the contest is going to use. because that happened after the last episode. I wanted to go ahead and get it. It's actually been running almost two weeks already, but I'm going to keep running it for almost another two weeks, and we'll actually start the whole round off on our year-end finale. We'll be able to work that in easily. Okay. So the links in the show notes for people who want to go. Feel free to submit more than once. This is not voting right now. This is just a compile list of games. It's been probably almost a week since I looked, and I think we were around 20 submissions of games, which is good. I'd be perfectly fine going with 20. I don't know if there are any. I know there was one repeat, but other than that, they were all pretty unique. But there are some rules, and the main ones that will trip people up is if you're submitting a solid state or beyond era game, it cannot be in Pinside's top 200. It could be 201, but if it's in the top 200, I don't want to hear it. That is not nearly shameful enough for us to discuss. I don't need people coming in and saying, you know, sticking in some game like freaking Tron on the list and going, well, it's shameful because it didn't come with enough lights. And then it wins because it's the best game easily. It's shameful because I didn't get the LE. Yes, sir. Say I'm pro. I'm not pro specifically. So it can't be that. And we're not discriminating on saying you have to submit a solid state game. It can be an electrical mechanical. In that case, it needs to be outside of Pinside's top 100. So 101 and below are okay. But feel free, you know, we're going to randomly seed them. I'm not going to seed them based off of where they are on Pinside. I just need to have some threshold to decide what might be considered shameful. And we're using shame in quotes, but you can interpret that any way you want. Just a game that you think is underappreciated or a game that you think gets a lot of hate for some particular reason. It doesn't necessarily have to be a game that you want but would be embarrassed to own, which is kind of what shame implies. You know, we can avoid this whole copyright issue if we get you a robe and some dish towels to drape over your head and a bell. And we'll just do the picture of you and you can be the shame ringer. I don't have it in the budget to buy a bell. so this idea is out we're not going to discuss this idea anymore so it was very clever of you and now your cleverness needs to die okay one last pinball thing Texas Pinball Festival we are going for sure we locked in last night we came to our agreement on that and I actually booked the hotel room about an hour ago so that's all reserved and I ordered my registration while I was at it just to get it out of the way. Just get it done? Yeah, get it done. Get it done, get myself a black shirt. I'll get mine next week. Yeah, I like the shirts. I didn't like last year's shirts. I do like this year's shirts. Yeah, this year's is a lot better. I did get last year's, but I was like, yeah, because I don't know about buying anything. So yeah, we'll be at TPF. So if you want to see us at TPF, we'll be there. We should bring some stickers. We bought a thousand stickers. Yeah. They were pretty cheap. They look good We still have magnets as well Maybe we'll bring some magnets too But anyway if you see us I'm the one that looks awesome And Tony's the one that looks like Tony Yeah Of course as soon as they hear me speak They'll be like where's Tony He's the voice we like to listen to I have actually been recognized twice now Because of my voice It's very distinct So that kind of makes me feel Feel good Yeah. Because I've had a couple times where I've been doing something and someone's like, I recognize that voice. Are you Tony from the Eclectic Gamers podcast? Yes, I am. And I have people go, hey, are you that other guy? I'm like, yes, I am. I love being the second fiddle. It's the best fiddle of all. There's no pressure. But anyway, so yeah. So we're going to be at that show. It's the one that's easiest for us to drive to. So it's a fairly affordable trip, and it's kind of become the industry show. So honestly, if you're not going to play in a tournament, in which case, you want to do Pinberg at Replay FX. That's the tournament. Which we will do someday, I hope. Yes, I'm hopeful as well. But this is the fun show. They've got lots of games. A lot of sort of illuminaries from the pinball world get lined up to do these. They have seminars. if you want to sit down and learn anything it's a good mix it's always a good time it's enjoyable definitely it's been getting better this is going to be our third attendance and I would say last time was even better than the first time and I had a ton of fun and enjoyed the first time a lot I think the thing for me at least with the first instances we did the tournament and I don't think it was worth the stress. I agree. That's why I haven't done the tournament since then. And I'm not doing the tournament in 2018. No, me neither. I mean, I enjoy pinball. I like playing pinball. Pinball's a lot of fun. I would like to own a couple pinballs. I'm not a great player. And for most of these tournaments, me playing is basically just handing money away to other people and adding a ton of stress and taking a bunch of time that I could be doing other more fun stuff out. Now, for something like Pinberg, Pinberg's different. I would do Pinburgh in an instant because then I would settle into the place where I expect to be down there in like the Zed grouping instead of, you know. Oh, I see. Well, I mean, the thing that I like about Pinburgh is you're playing the whole time. Right. You know, I don't know if you've heard this one, but how do you know when you're at a pinball tournament? Nobody's playing pinball. That's the joke. So true. And it was true at Texas. It was. Because when we did it in 2016, it was, I mean, I liked that it was limited entry. But even with that, there were long queues. You could queue up with software. But you couldn't really go very far away. Because there wasn't much of a window when they called your name. And I don't blame them. And then they iced you off the list. But it was just like there were a lot of people just sitting and waiting to get a chance to put up a score. and then trying to be strategic and holding back entries so that they could wait until the next day to see where they needed to most attack to get back into the very narrow finals pool. It sounds like every year they've made improvements to that tournament. I don't mean this as a major criticism of the tournament itself, but it is what makes me not want to do it. It's too much like a traditional tournament to be special enough for me to want to pay how much more it is than what I get here in the Kansas City area. Right, and the difference is here in the Kansas City area, it's basically the times of the month, the once or twice a month, that I get to hang out with my friends that I don't get to hang out with as much as I used to and hang out with all my pinball friends. And we spend more time just BSing and chatting, and that's fine. But in the bigger tournament, with all the extra stress, it's not the same amount of fun or the same amount of enjoyment as you're sitting there BSing with each other and stuff. So, no, it's not worth the stress because I felt like in 2016, I felt like that first full day. It doesn't help that we drove down that day. Yeah, well. So it's like, hey, let's jump in the car at like 6.30 going on 7 in the morning and drive to Dallas and immediately play in tournaments until like midnight. Lessons were learned. Yes, lessons were learned. But anyway So yeah, if you see people that you think Look like how they sound Then they're probably us And you can always feel free to come up And say hi That's it for Pinball So let's go ahead and go over to the video game segment Tony, you have a Switch You're console scum now I am console scum You want to tell us about any of the games you've been playing? I've been playing Breath of the Wild Breath of the Wild is amazing Why? Why is it so amazing? I hear that about every Zelda game ever. I know. See, the thing is, I'm not actually a Zelda fanboy. I haven't, like, there are certain tentpole games that are considered the Zelda game, like Wind Waker and Majora's Mask, and I've never played those games. You know what? I've played Zelda. I've played A Link to the Past. What about Ocarina of Time? No, I've not played Ocarina of Time. And I know that's like a major faux pas. I've never been a huge Zelda person. What I am is I like open world games. That's why I liked Fallout. It's why I like Skyrim. I like games where I can just wander off and do whatever. So that was kind of a drawing part. It's like, well, here's a Zelda game that is open world. And that's what I've been doing. I've got a goal in mind that I'm supposed to have, and I'm kind of meandering that general direction. But mainly I've just been exploring. And it's a lot of fun. I think the cooking system needs a little work. The cooking system is awesome. The stuff you can get out of it is awesome, but it's a little slower and more menu heavy than I feel like it needs to be. Oh, yeah. I think I understand. It's like, I think it's a system where maybe, I haven't picked up any of the DLC yet, but it's something I can see. I almost feel like you need to have something where you can kind of pre-make like recipe cards where you could just go, boom, oh, I want to make this simmered mushroom nut casserole thing. And it's like, I want to make this. And you can just choose the card and it'll just automatically cook those amount of items. Because as it is now, you have to go into the menu, you have to choose the item, you have to manually choose each item you want in the cook item, then you have to exit the menu and drop them into a cook pot. Okay. Okay, so they made it somewhat tedious, it seems. It's somewhat tedious to do the cooking. I wonder if maybe they thought people wouldn't have to go into it much. I don't know. I know I just, like, literally the last thing I did before I saved and quit out to come over here this morning was go, okay, I've got a ton of raw ingredients. And I sat down and I spent probably 20 plus minutes cooking. So. You could almost cook a real meal on that time. I cook a real meal faster than that. So, I mean, but even with that, it's fun. The combat is exciting without being so overwhelmingly hard. I'm not far enough into it to get super deep into anything. But the various specials, you know, Link's got his bombs, and now he's got like a magnetism power that lets you pick up and move metal objects. and there's a power that lets you create ice columns in water, so I've actually gone through and made bridges for myself across rivers using the ice power thing. So Link has the X-Gene now. Link has the X-Gene now. It's been fun. I definitely recommend it to anybody who likes open world games, anybody who likes Skyrim-ish type games, except for, like I said, this is definitely not on the same level of hyper-realistic, super bloody, kind of almost dark levels that Skyrim goes to. It's a Legend of Zelda game. I mean, you're playing Link. It's just open world, and it's fun. There's good exploration. I've been enjoying it. I've been enjoying it quite a lot. I do have one incredibly huge problem with the Nintendo Switch, period. The buttons are like the exact opposite of what they would be on my Xbox controllers. And I am still having problems with it. It's getting better, but I'm still having problems with it. Because Xbox 360 was the only thing I ever played. On my PC, I use an Xbox controller for my PC. Right. So everything I do, I have the buttons memorized for the Xbox controller. And what's X on an Xbox controller is A on the Switch. Okay. So it's little. I'm starting to get into it. It's just that has nothing against the game and everything to do with muscle memory right there. Right, right. So there is some DLC on the game that's supposed to add some really good stuff. I'm going to pick up at some point. One of the things I find interesting is it literally has a thing where it will track all of your movements for the last 200 hours. So you can display on a map exactly where you've moved and how you've done over the course of the last 200 hours of gameplay. I'm kind of interested to see how that comes up. Also, the fact that there are people who've played enough that 200 hours doesn't display everything is amazing to me. it's not surprising I mean I hit 120 some odd hours into Fallout 4 before I ever went to Diamond City because I'm that kind of open world game player where I just go exploring like every nook and cranny and side quests and this and that it's the reason why I don't do a ton of open world games because I'll lose myself in an open world game forever until I get bored with it and it's like okay and I'm like halfway through the quest line I'm halfway through the quest line and it's like I gotta play something different. Yeah, that's why I had to mix it up after I wrapped up the Mafia 3 game. I was like, okay, well, I don't want to go into it. I have Mad Max waiting for me, but I didn't want to go into another sandbox right away, which is why I went into Wolfenstein instead. And now Rocket League. And now Rocket League, yeah. I bought on a sale a month ago or so, maybe a little longer than that. Because I saw it on Twitch. I saw a tournament and I thought, oh, this actually looks really good. And then... Well, 2015 would like to welcome you, too. You know what? 2015 can go suck an egg because I wasn't watching Rocket League back then. You know what? It's like I wasn't at Overwatch on the ground floor, but I came around. I wait to see if it's got legs. I don want to be that person that goes and buys Battleborn More like Battlestillborn the way that one went wow I hey look it it was all very tragic so it has to have a tragic analogy and and so in the case of Rocket League the problem was I knew it was free when it came out for PlayStation it was like their their free game that way so I just was thinking I should get it for free from Xbox eventually or Steam eventually but they never made it free. So anyway, it finally got low enough that I was like, okay, I'll buy it. Fine. You have money. And I only put in a couple games on it, and that was about it because I was busy playing probably Mafia III. I don't know. And so this week in particular, I started, or I should say last week, I started really putting in more time, trying the different modes. And, yeah, I see why it's addictive because, I mean, the games in and of themselves are short. it's easy to understand there aren't a lot of controls to it but how you can manipulate your vehicle with all those controls can become very expert very quickly so there's a lot of stuff I've seen from those tournament plays that I cannot do I was like how is their vehicle that high? I don't understand so anyway I've tried all the game modes now that it came with So it's got the soccer mode, which, I mean, my closest analogy to it was Overwatch's Summer Games thing with Lucio Ball. Rocket League is so much better than Lucio Ball, in part because I can change the camera so I don't have to look from the car's perspective. I can have a ball cam instead and be watching. And I function better that way. How I think of a sports game would be normally is your goal is to keep track of the object you keep in play, not yourself. it's a game I don't need it to be like I'm actually driving a car right now but it's just on the fly it's not like you have to go into settings just hit Y if you want to switch so sometimes I do switch but it also has like a basketball mode ice hockey style and another mode which is basically the soccer mode I think they call it rumble but you get power ups so it's like smash in a way where you can do things freeze the ball or attack enemies and things like that. So those are all pretty neat in terms of variance. And then I ran through a whole season, which when we got ready, when we were leaving for pinball, I was wrapping up my final grand championship where I was totally awesome. And my little rookie AIs were worshiping me when they weren't scoring goals on me on my own goal. Merlin was the worst AI. Don't ever play with Merlin. He's bad. You can't trust him. He's a traitor. and so yeah I've just been pleasantly surprised I have made a little bit more progress in Wolfenstein, I've been doing these side hunt missions in it they are called Enigma code missions or something but I think I'm just going to wrap up the one I'm on and then keep pushing through the story because that pile I've got on my TV is not getting any shorter, I've got Mad Max still to start, I still have Resident Evil 7 which I really want to play that's probably going to be the next one I put in I still have Seven Days to Die which I got for my birthday prior you've still not gotten to it I've still not gotten to it, I have Halo Wars 2 and I've probably got a couple more that are just not sticking out in my brain right now and I'm looking forward to all of those so it's like I like to play, kind of like how you've been putting your time into Wind Waker, not Wind Waker not Wind Waker, Breath of the Wild you've never played Wind Waker, Breath of the Wild I like to I don't like to play multiple games I mean like standby games like doing my random heroes in Overwatch for loot crates and stuff no problem that's a game that's like going back into Battlefield 1 doing that multiplayer stuff that I have no problem with but I don't like to do single player campaigns in multiple games in part because when I ever I try it I start getting confused at what my controls are kind of like how you were with the Nintendo versus the Xbox well, you know when you've got games where it's like oh, well reload is Y here and X there and in this one you hit start to open your map and the other one you hit select to open your map and so I'm busy hitting the wrong things and going in and it's just like no, no that's why when I don't play I typically, like you, I don't play two of these same style of games but then I'll play a lot of RTS's or 4X games in addition to, like, I'll be playing an FPS, but I'll play a turn-based shooter or a cover or something like that, an isometric turn-based squad game like XCOM, something like that. I like to do those while I'm watching shows because if I get distracted watching the show, it's turn-based, so I'm not losing anything. Right, makes sense. So I do a lot of the, I'll bounce between, like I said, the X-Coms or other similar type of turn-based games or Civilization or any turn-based 4X when I'm watching shows that I've not, not when I don't have a show on that's for background noise, but when it's a show that it's like, well, I'm paying attention to it, but it's not something that has me completely riveted, but it's something so when it gets real, so when it does grab me, I can turn away and I don't have to worry about, oh, hey, I forgot to hit the pause button or whatever. I see. And I actually very rarely watch anything when I play games. Yeah. I usually just play the games. See, and I very rarely don't have some other, something else going on, unless like when I'm playing Doom or when I'm playing Wolfenstein. A lot of like first-person shooter stuff, I'll do just that. Okay. Even with Overwatch, I tend to do just Overwatch. or if I have something playing somewhere, it is something that is not as time-consumed, grabby. I won't be watching Parks and Rec or Walking Dead while I'm playing Overwatch, but I might have a YouTube video going. I've really gotten into these big, long Let's Plays by a YouTuber. who does very, he does RTSs and very strategic type games. And I'll watch a lot of his stuff while I'm playing like Overwatch or something because the games he's playing and he gets into details and almost tutorial-like at times when he's not doing an actual tutorial even for games that I'll watch and consider, especially games that I'm considering picking up. Because there's a couple games he's been playing that I'm kind of on the fence about. I'm debating it. We'll see. Maybe I'll have some new games next time on the computer. But right now, I'm mainly just playing Switch. Right. Now, since our last episode, my understanding is that there has been some Star Citizen happenings, Tony. Yes, I know. You inspired them. I did. I inspired them. Because as soon as I said something, they dropped 3.0. And they dropped news announcements, or a newsletter, I should say. They're starting to put out a monthly newsletter racking up to Squadron 42. There's still no release date for Squadron 42, but all of the stuff I've read on 3.0 says it's good. I've still not played it. I'm still not planning on playing it. I'm going to wait for an actual completed product before I play it. But it's been a big mix of pretty much everyone I've read about online or seen review it has been like, yeah, 3.0 makes major changes that are good. There's nothing really terrible about it that has come to light as of yet. So we will see how it goes. It's been a year. We'll see if there's another update or if we go another year before there's another update. We'll see how long it takes for them to put out an actual product. But I know this has wet people's taste buds enough that I've seen plenty of posts online about people who are going out and buying yet more ships. Some of them, you know, oh, yeah, I went and dropped $1,000 to pick up this ship last weekend. It's like. And they can land grab. Yeah, I don't, I don't, I still don't understand it. I mean, there are people out there who have thrown the literal price of cars into this game, and this game doesn't even exist yet. I guess they're really rich. I don't know. I mean, there are people out there who, and if you go on, the forums are scary, because there are people out there who are, even at this stage, when the game doesn't exist, it's literally, well, here, we did a bunch of upgrades to this module that's kind of like the game, but this isn't the game. There's no story. There's no persistent. This is just kind of testy stuff. And they're like, well, as is, it's the greatest game I've ever played. It's like it's not even a game yet. Yeah. It gets into, and there's a term I should have written it down because I'd heard of it before. Sunk cost fallacy? Yes. Thank you. Thank you. Yes, the sunk cost fallacy. And I'm certain that's exactly what's going on there. And we see it in pinball. We do. You know, that's part of the issue where on some of the, well, Alien's a good case in point. There are a lot, almost every unboxed Alien that I'm reading about on Pennside is having multiple problems. And that you have to make some adjustments to games is quote-unquote well-known. But I think some people are now playing that up as, oh, I mean, when I got, when I bought, I only ever had one new unboxed game. When I got Star Trek, I did not have to adjust anything out of the box that I can think of. I had to adjust a stand-up target after 400 plays. I've had to replace some rubbers. It's a physical thing. Things happen. But I didn't have to go in and start segregating out the wires to the flippers because the colors changing LEDs are inappropriately changing colors because there's so much interference from the power going through. I have to do things like that. And those are minor issues, don't get me wrong. But it also is a testament to poor quality control. And there are people that can't tell what modes they're in who are hearing weird buzzing sounds and are having issues where sometimes the game requires them to reset and it doesn't boot right and it's freezing. But it's the greatest game ever. It's the greatest game ever. And I'm still having a lot of fun. But I'm selling it also. Right, right, right. So it's kind of like that. in that case they have their product but there are these other people that are latching onto it who have money in and they need it to succeed sort of like what we see with Dutch as well, big Lebowski people who have the money in and they don't really have a way to get their money back and so they just have to cheer on every idea even if it costs money and it's like yeah we gotta do that do that, do that and it's like guys I get it, you don't want it to fail because you've already spent so much money but that doesn't make it good it's like standing in that supermarket line that isn't moving and you refuse to move because you've already sunk so much time in there right I love to see that when I'm at a store they don't deviate it's like no that checker is just they're too old they're not moving you need to go along with someone who's still alive a pretty certain checker died while checking this person out yes it's tragic but they're not any less dead. You need to go to another line now. This is how it works. This happened to me at Walmart. I never go to Walmart except to buy oil for my car. I went to Walmart. This has nothing to do with video games. I went to Walmart. I walked past the video game section. I grabbed my oil. I grabbed my filter. I go to checkout. 20 items or less. I'm thinking it's going to be moving quickly. This poor little old lady. She was not dead. she was doing her best. Her best was not satisfying to me. And it was a mix of her speed and that everyone in front of me decided to buy things that didn't have barcodes on them. I know. I didn't think it was possible. Guy in front of me bought a salad. Well, no. He bought a salad? No. He had some other stuff and he had a salad and the salad did not have the barcode. He had been in line so long, he told her to just not, he would just starve. He said, just don't give me my salad. He gave up on the salad. And it looked like for a salad it looked okay. So that was the sacrifice I felt. He sacrificed that salad to save all of us, really, because he knew. He knew he chose the wrong line. And by then I knew I chose the wrong line. The only problem in my case was I didn't see any other lines, and I didn't realize I had self-checkout. I was going to say, why didn't you just go to self-checkout if you bought a couple quarts of oil? I didn't know that. I bought five quarts of oil, and I didn't see the checkout. That was self-checkout. I didn't know they had that there. Because I never go. Because I care about my country. America. America. So, whether that have to do with anything, it just says that there are other costs. You can have a sunk cost of time. Yeah. Or money. And some of these things, in the case of Star Citizen, you have both. They've sunk a lot of time waiting for this game, so it better be the best game ever. This is the thing with Duke Nukem. But once it came out, everyone came around because they didn't sink a bunch of money into it. No, it was just time. It was just time. There were people who had scans of their receipts pre-ordering that game from the 90s. And I borrowed a copy when it came out. That game is not good. No, it's not. It would have been better to not have released it at all because that showed that Gearbox has flaws. That's why there's no Half-Life 3. That's why there will never be Half-Life 3. Yes. That and Aliens Colonial Marines. It was awful, too. And by Gearbox. but I did not even borrow that one because I could tell it was a dog. Why is it with Alien games not working out in any medium? I think it's because pretty much the only way any of these games play it out is as a big action thing, and quite frankly, I don't think it works very well that way. I blame Prometheus, the movie. It ruined all of it. Even things that came before Prometheus, it ruined. Aliens 3 was ruined by Prometheus. Aliens 3 is a tolerable movie. so bad. Alien vs. Predator. Alien vs. Predator is a worse movie than Alien 3. That is true. But it is an infinitely better movie than Alien vs. Predator 2. Right. Where do you stand on Resurrection? Resurrection I think is the third best Alien movie. I agree. There's a lot wrong with it. It borrows from the Alien and Aliens way more than it really should. In terms of plot beats. But Ron Perlman is chewing a lot of scenery in that movie. And it makes up for a lot. It's kind of like how I don't put Die Hard 3 ahead of Die Hard. But Samuel L. Jackson's performance in Die Hard 3 makes it the second best Die Hard movie. I agree with that as well. And now we've become the eclectic pop culture podcast. That's right. So that means it's time for us to stop. We're at the end of our show. We made it. So we'll be back in two weeks. It'll be our year-end review. The year in review. Yes, the review of the review. Well, we might review the review. We'll hit on some of the major news things that we covered over the year in terms of video game stuff, pinball stuff. I haven't decided if I'll do podcast analytics. Last time, I think I waited until the first January episode. Because we started the show at the end of January in 2016. So we're not at our one year anniversary Our yearly anniversary But we're getting close Okay so until we do the year end review Of the review We'll go ahead and stop it here If people want to reach out to us you can always email us EclecticGamersPodcast at gmail.com Or we're on a few social media platforms Such as facebook.com Slash EclecticGamersPodcast And we're on twitter And instagram as Eclectic underscore gamers and until the end of the year I'll say I'm Dennis and I'm Tony and if you want to send me a friend code on Nintendo go ahead and send it to Facebook yes send it on Facebook we'll make sure he gets it and until next time goodbye everybody see ya